Ministry of Innovation —

Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love

Did you know that blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit? We recently learned that many of our readers did not know this, so I'm going to explain why.

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us. Just like a restaurant, we have to pay to staff, we have to pay for resources, and we have to pay when people consume those resources. The difference, of course, is that our visitors don't pay us directly but indirectly by viewing advertising. (Although a few thousand of you are subscribers, and we thank you all very, very much!)

My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.

If you read a site and care about its well being, then you should not block ads (or you subscribe to sites like Ars that offer ads-free versions of the site). If a site has advertising you don't agree with, don't go there. I think it is far better to vote with page views than to show up and consume resources without giving anything in return. I think in some ways the Internet and its vast anonymity feeds into a culture where many people do not think about the people, the families, the careers that go into producing a website. People talk about how annoying advertisments are, but I'll tell you what: it's a lot more annoying and frustrating to have to cut staff and cut benefits because a huge portion of readers block ads. Yet I've seen that happen at dozens of great sites over the last few years, Ars included.

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results. They have complex models which tell them if X number are watching, Y will likely see the ad (and it even varies by ad position, show type, etc!). But they really have no true idea who sees what ad, and that's why it's a medium based on potential and not provable results. On the Internet everything is 100% trackable and is billed and sold as such. Comparing a website to TiVo is comparing apples to asparagus. And anyway, my point still stands: if you like this site you shouldn't block ads. Invariably someone else will pop in and tell me that it's not their fault that our business model sucks. My response is simple: you either care about the site's well-being, or you don't. As for our business model sucking, we've been here for 12 years, online-only. Not many sites can say that.

Let me stop and clarify quickly that I am not saying that we are on the verge of vanishing from the Internet. But we, like many, many sites are greatly affected by ad blocking, and it is a very worrisome trend.

So I'll end this part of the discussion by just reiterating my point: blocking ads hurts the sites you love. Please consider not blocking ads on those sites.

An experiment gone wrong

Starting late Friday afternoon we conducted a 12 hour experiment to see if it would be possible to simply make content disappear for visitors who were using a very popular ad blocking tool. Technologically, it was a success in that it worked. Ad blockers, and only ad blockers, couldn't see our content. We tested just one way of doing this, but have devised a way to keep it rotating were we to want to permanently implement it. But we don't. Socially, the experiment was a mixed bag. A bunch of people whitelisted Ars, and even a few subscribed. And while others showed up to support our actions, there was a healthy mob of people criticizing us for daring to take any kind of action against those who would deny us revenue even though they knew they were doing so. Others rightly criticized the lack of a warning or notification as to what was going on.

We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is doing so with malice. As it turns out, only a few people are, and many (most?) indicated you are happy to help out. That's what led to this hopefully informative post.

Our experiment is over, and we're glad we did it because it led to us learning that we needed to communicate our point of view every once in a while. Sure, some people told us we deserved to die in a fire. But that's the Internet! Making its ways into parents' basements since 1991. To those people I say: admit it, you just wish you were half as cool as this guy.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher

2031 Reader Comments

Yay!!! Educating your readers is definitely the way to go. I suggest you guys do a once a year campaign like this across all Condé Nast sites. Make it an official "Support the Content Providers You Love" day. Awesome. What you guys did yesterday was not awesome.

Does this apply to blocking flash content? I do not use an ad blocker, but I do use a flash blocker.

Sort of. When you disable Flash completely, we serve up static backup ads. Flashblock, however, breaks this so it's effectively the same as running a dedicated ad blocker. It's more a technical problem with Flashblock, though.

The only ad blocking I'd conciser (I don't current do any though I have toyed with it in the past) would be those truly annoying ones (you all know what I'm talking about). The ads on Ars are generally out of the way enough that they don't annoy me, and I even click on a few!

As a linux user, the web is only really useful with flashblock. Without it, both FF and Chrome grind to a halt with more than a few tabs open and the cpu fan in my laptop takes off like a jet engine. I really don't mind static or even animated gif ads, but there is a limit to my tolerance for flash ads.

As an aside, 90% of the ads I see on ars anymore are house ads for other Conde Nast publications, so I'm not sure if there really is a problem.

While I don't want to be the first someone else to pop up an point out that your business model sucks, I would like to say that, recent trends have made it clear that the ad-supported business model is one with a sell-by date fast approaching.Clearly it hasn't caused a serious problem here yet, but, like many such things, there won't be a problem until there's problems.

As I stated in response to the 'experiment' I hope that the successful history of the ad-supported model doesn't blind you to it's treacherous-looking future.

Blocking the ad-blockers and informing people of the damage done by ad-blocking is good for now, but one day it won't be, and by then it may be too late to do anything about it.

I run AdBlock and just white-listed Ars, simply because Ars is a high-quality site and you asked.

I run AdBlock because so many sites post only the minimum amount of work on each page to be considered content, filling the rest with advertisements and other random in-house plugs. For reference, see the typical news site, or the top-ten list where each item is listed on a separate page, each page loaded with more ads. And there are the Flash and video ads; these are the worst by far, but all serve solely to distract the reader from the content he's reading.

Plugins like AdBlock became necessary as publishers continued to jam more and more advertisements onto their layouts, and as ads became more and more obnoxious. Eventually, you reach a point where a reader decides he has had enough, and blocks all ads for all sites, regardless of well each site has behaved individually. The same thing happened with television; a viewer sees one too many commercials with Billy Mays screaming at twice the volume of the show he was watching, and decides to buy a Tivo and start skipping commercials entirely.

Most people have no problem with tolerating some amount of ads in exchange for free content, but when publishers greedily begin to shift the ratio in their favor, they cannot act surprised when users do as well.

Damnit, I had written a response in the other thread and when I went to post it was locked... So I'll just c/p it here...

DrPizza wrote:

Sure, we've seen a few people posting "oh but if you'd only ask nicely we'd whitelist the site!". Which is just absurd. "If you'd only ask nicely, we'd stop stealing from you!".

You do realize that isn't far fetched right? Ars has covered studies that said simple notices can reduce piracy by 70%. So the idea that just asking nicely has a lot of merit. Then after asking nicely, you can move to step 2 (the "experiment" from yesterday).

Also, as to your earlier note about not running NoScript, that seems preposterous when you take accessibility into account.

On a somewhat related note yesterday, DF had an interesting article on full-text RSS feeds and advertising...

Quote:

But: DF’s RSS feed, which contains the full content of the site, not only generates money directly, but has grown to become the single largest source of revenue on the site.

Granted Gruber says it may not scale well and work on large sites like Macword (or Ars) but its an interesting related read nonetheless.

Does this apply to blocking flash content? I do not use an ad blocker, but I do use a flash blocker.

Sort of. When you disable Flash completely, we serve up static backup ads. Flashblock, however, breaks this so it's effectively the same as running a dedicated ad blocker. It's more a technical problem with Flashblock, though.

You should tease people by allowing the first 20% to be viewable with AB on then a nice little note that says "Disable your AdBlocker to view the rest of the article." This is basically what some newspapers (see WSJ) do except with a pay wall instead of ads.

I'm another Linux user that only loads flash at my discretion, using NoScript. Similarly, I have Javascript enabled for Ars, but not for any ad brokers. If there were a cookie I could activate that would ensure I'd always be served the static image/text ads, I would gladly keep it set. Browsing with various executable content running from everywhere is too much for me, though.

Maybe I should just suggest a subscription to the next person who asks what sort of gift to get me.

Same general problem. Flash blocking plugins like that make browsers report that Flash is available, thus you don't get a backup static ad. I don't really know what the solution is, other than removing Flash completely and switching Youtube to HTML5 mode.

Many thanks to all of you who are unblocking or already had us unblocked. You might not think so, but being as wrong as we were is actually making me feel really good right now.

biggerx wrote:

Yay!!! Educating your readers is definitely the way to go. I suggest you guys do a once a year campaign like this across all Condé Nast sites. Make it an official "Support the Content Providers You Love" day.

I think we may very well do this!

SalsaGuy wrote:

While I don't want to be the first someone else to pop up an point out that your business model sucks, I would like to say that, recent trends have made it clear that the ad-supported business model is one with a sell-by date fast approaching.

I hear you, but two things. 1. People have been predicting this for all 12 years we've been around. 2. There's nothing better right now, but we are at least trying with Premier, and we have some more stuff planned.

yokem55 wrote:

As an aside, 90% of the ads I see on ars anymore are house ads for other Conde Nast publications, so I'm not sure if there really is a problem.

That's common for this time of year, but we have targeted campaigns that are not meeting quota right now because of ad blocking. Some clients get very specific!

Ok, I'll give it a shot and unblock ads on this site. But if they get annoying or get in the way or take up too much screen real estate, I'll probably block them again. It's certainly a delicate balance, especially on sites like this. So many readers know how to block ads, and you've got to walk the line between noticeable and annoying.

Oh, and on the subscriptions: might I suggest shorter term options? I'm a bit hesitant to fork over $50 for a full year when I don't even know if the content is worth it. Maybe offer a $5 or $6 monthly option? Take away the free Wired subscription, both to create a value-add for the long-term subscriber and to avoid the logistical nightmare of one-month magazine subs, of course...

I whitelisted you guys in adblock, but, like lots of others have said above, I use NoScript as well, so I'm not sure whether just disabling ABP is enough.

I'm also concerned because I often use a curses-based browser, Links, and I'd hate to be unable to view an article or two on Ars because you guys decided there's no revenue to be gained from text browsers. It's not a huge deal for me to mark an article as something to come back to when I have a GUI browser available, but I hope you keep accessibility in mind with any changes you make.

On the upper right corner of Slashdot's front page, I have a little option checkbox to disable advertising. It's very prominent. Under the checkbox is "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising." Been there since my subscription ran out.

It was only then that I realized I was adblocking /. since I hadn't seen any ads anyway. That's when I whitelisted /. on my machines. The Disable Advertising option is still there, I still see ads.

Hey, look at that. Good will, no resentment, /. got more than what it asked for.

Among things that really bothered me about the way that Ars handled this was the presumption of guilt. That very same presumption of guilt that Ars writes very strongly about when reporting on the anti-consumer activities of Big Content.

The readership provides value to your site, both social and economic. Without commenting, this site will die. The readership is also what you're selling to your advertisers. For me, the comments add value to most of Ars' day to day reporting.

Now, after this "12 hour experiment", I have a pretty good idea what Ars thinks about it's readership. This is a very clear indicator of where Ars stands and where it's moving. And that's too bad.

Oh, and on the subscriptions: might I suggest shorter term options? I'm a bit hesitant to fork over $50 for a full year when I don't even know if the content is worth it. Maybe offer a $5 or $6 monthly option?

Glad to see you guys taking note of your readers perspective(at least the reasonable ones). I was one of those running an ad blocker when I first downloaded firefox to block annoying ads. Though I was initially annoyed at the lack warning and somewhat snide remarks by the admins, I completely understand the frustration.

Ars will remain whitelisted on my ad blocker as I am happy to provide you with ad views. Your content is worth it so long as the ads remain unobtrusive. Keep up the good work, and try and keep your ads as pertinent to tech readers as they currently are.

Invariably someone always pops into a discussion like this and brings up some analogy with television advertising, radio, or somesuch. It is not in any way the same; advertisers in those mediums are paying for potential to reach audiences, and not for results.

It's the editorial contempt Ars has heaped over the years on those other media for the steps they take to protect their business that makes the whole thing seem very hypocritical, not whether the technologies or business models are directly analogous in one way or another.

(it seems to me ad blockers would probably hurt you guys even if the advertisers were paying for potential rather than site views, since ad blockers damage that potential in a presumably quantifiable way)

What aurich said. Me and Kurt are really big nerds when it comes to making sure the page loads are really fast. We load all our ads in iframes—much to the ire of our advertising department —so technically they should not be holding up the loading of the main document.

If you ever do run across something like that, please email us and we'll track it down.

I'm also concerned because I often use a curses-based browser, Links, and I'd hate to be unable to view an article or two on Ars because you guys decided there's no revenue to be gained from text browsers. It's not a huge deal for me to mark an article as something to come back to when I have a GUI browser available, but I hope you keep accessibility in mind with any changes you make.

We will never, ever prevent you from reading content in browsers that aren't capable of displaying our ads. The "test" we ran only affected people using ad blockers that actively remove ads.

If I view Ars in Firefox, its not loading the ads, but I barely use FF, so thats just not a real issue with me.

My only problem, is the flash ads regularily 'trip up', and cause some sort of reloading sequence or something to happen, so I hear this constant 'clicking' like I've chosen to load a page. Its the same sound I hear when I type a URL into IE and press ENTER, and it just repeats and repeats, unless I refresh the page. Its quite annoying when you're using another app and you have to come back to refresh Ars site because the flash ads are bugging out. My only point here is I am glad I'm able to help by loading the ads, once in a while I click on them thinking it might help out (if the vendor seems trustworthy), but its tempting to block them so I don't have to deal with the flash reload bug, or whatever it should be called.

Does this apply to blocking flash content? I do not use an ad blocker, but I do use a flash blocker.

Sort of. When you disable Flash completely, we serve up static backup ads. Flashblock, however, breaks this so it's effectively the same as running a dedicated ad blocker. It's more a technical problem with Flashblock, though.

There's no way for you to detect Flashblock? That seems unlikely. I just turned off Ad-block for Ars - I'm willing to give it a try and see if you're really resisting the urge to run the kind of hideous ads that made me install Ad-block in the first place! But I can't turn off Flashblock - I use Linux and every flash app is a potential browser-killer.

You're whitelisted for now, and I'll subscribe eventually. Ars is one of the sites that doesn't try and split a story into 50 pages with only a paragraph per page so.. As long as that stays the same, this'll stay.

to clarify, I mostly run blockers because of being in really small screen or slow connection environments most of the time. so.

Well, this article is informative. It stops short of asking us to please whitelist the site (comes off a little much like a guilt trip) and pussyfoots around the apology a bit, but I accept. I realize this entire article was written exclusively for my benefit. It's the price I pay by being so individually awesome (please have your sarcasm detector on).

I will whitelist the site. Thanks for making great content. Please keep doing it. I'm happy to play a miniscule, probably insignificant actually, role in keeping Ars alive.